A former IRA prisoner who was once sentenced to hundreds of years in jail will next week become the first Sinn Fein mayor of an Irish city since the republican hero of the independence war, Terence MacSweeney.

Cathal Crumley, 42, who spent three years on the blanket during the H-block protests, is set to be elected Mayor of Derry on 5 June.

The last time a Sinn Fein councillor was elected mayor of an Irish city was in 1920, when MacSweeney became the first citizen of Cork and Lloyd George was still Prime Minister of Great Britain and Ireland. MacSweeney died in the same year, after 74 days on hunger strike in Cork jail in protest at his incarceration by the British.

For a new generation of IRA members like Crumley, MacSweeney's death fast provided inspiration during the first decade of the current Troubles.

'I think I have a very strong sense of the history of this. The party in Derry is very proud that we may be the first to have a Sinn Fein mayor since partition. It's a very important breakthrough, given the fact that over the last 30 years Sinn Fein has been demonised and denigrated from all quarters. This represents the breaking down of our exclusion even on our local council. We've been trying to get the top position since 1985,' Crumley said.

The father of three is the embodiment of the new Sinn Fein that has evolved over the last 10 years since the peace process began. Clean- cut, courteous, articulate, always a shirt and tie on hand for a photo-opportunity, Crumley was among the first wave of former prisoners to enter electoral politics after the 1981 hunger-strike.

The modern Sinn Fein's foray into Northern elections took place a year later when Crumley stood alongside Martin McGuinness as the party's candidates in Derry for the Assembly. At the time he was unable to canvass because he was being held in Belfast's Crumlin Road jail on the word of two IRA supergrasses, Bobby Quigley and Raymond Gilmour. Crumley spent four years on remand during which he was given nine life sentences. He was released on appeal in 1986.

Sitting in a cramped upstairs room of Sinn Fein's heavily fortified Gable Street office in Derry's Bogside, the artefacts of the armed struggle surround Crumley. These include a mounted poster with passport-size pictures of every one of the IRA Derry Brigade's volunteers killed over the last 30 years.

But despite his own background, Crumley vows that he wants to be mayor for all Derry's citizens, including unionists living on the mainly Protestant Waterside across the River Foyle.

'I will be pragmatic and sensible. But I won't be attending things like Remembrance Sunday because I am an Irish republican. But I will endeavour to attend other functions, which might involve Protestant/unionist areas. We will extend the hand of friendship to everyone and I won't set out to cause offence to anyone.'

On the other side of the Foyle, community workers who operate in Protestant estates are sceptical that a Sinn Fein mayor will be acceptable on the unionist Waterside. John Guthrie, who lives in the loyalist Tullyally area, predicts that the Protestant community will 'seclude itself from civic life over the next 12 months'.

Guthrie has no personal problem debating with his republican opponents, but believes the majority of unionists in the city will boy cott functions attending by a Sinn Fein mayor.

'The pressure will come on people like me not to turn up for meetings and functions organised by the new mayor. The perception on this side of the river is that his election represents the further alienation of the Protestant-unionist tradition in this city.'

Crumley said: 'I will carry out my job on an equitable and fair basis. I would be a fool to say there aren't contentious issues in the city like the Apprentice Boys march in August, but I will cross that bridge when I come to it - literally.'

As he prepares himself to follow in MacSweeney's footsteps, Crumley reflects on his days in H-block. 'I couldn't have possibly foreseen while on the blanket that one day I would be mayor of my own city. It's a strange turn of events, but it shows how far the struggle has come.'